


Katabasis

by deserts



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Blood, Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Dream Bubbles, F/M, Gen, Gore, Implied/Referenced Incest, Reality Bending, Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-25 19:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17127452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deserts/pseuds/deserts
Summary: You died, or are dead, or will be dead, and you are lonely, or aren't lonely, or will be lonely.Bro wakes up in a dream bubble, and he finds very quickly that he is not alone.





	1. ambrosia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peonies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peonies/gifts).



> I am absolutely not supposed to be doing what I'm doing right now.  
> I'll warn y'all know there IS a kiss  
> warnings for unreality and weird kind of awkward descriptions of changing scenery, as well as canon descriptions of character death!  
> just a dude, reliving his death for fun i guess!

Snow falls heavy outside and you stare at it, hard, try to remember the last time you saw snow like this. Try to remember something, a thing that’s missing, or maybe you’re trying to forget something else. You’ve misplaced your shades somewhere, or maybe you handed them over, and the memory of an expectant hand skates across the back of your mind, short-bitten nails and delicate fingers. You don’t recall where she put them.

A fire crackles to your left and you feel heat on your back, warming the ugly knit sweater that itches across your skin, acrylic instead of wool, because it’s cheaper, and she knows you hate expensive gifts. You watch the big fat snowflakes pile high on the mailbox outside, and you know you’re going to have to shovel again, in the morning. You don’t really know what time it is.

“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” comes the soft cadence of her voice, warm and hesitant, like she’s worried you’ll snap at her. You hear the click click click of her heels on the hardwood behind you, precise and even like 3-4 time. “It was just an itty bitty bump, sweetheart. If you’re worried, we can always set up a mattress in the nursery, and you’re more than welcome to spend the night there. I won’t even tell Egbert, cross my heart.”

“I ain’t worried,” your mouth says, and it feels mechanical. The voice from your chords is thinner, still stuck in your throat like your balls ain’t dropped. You remember in flashes, like blurred Polaroids: juggling cereal and Cheetos in the grocery store, standing in front of the coffee dispensers thinking  _"god i'm so tired"_ , Dave wriggling from your grasp and careening to the ground, how you let him and how you watched how you let him go you let him fall, just to see what would happen because you  
“He does better when I’m not around to fuck up, anyway.”

“Oh come now, you’re not that incompetent,” she chides, and her hand finds your arm, gives it a squeeze. You do not flinch away from her touch, you never have, and her grip is warm - no, cold - and firm on your bicep. “You care about him, Dirk. Everyone makes mistakes.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” you bite out, hunch into yourself slightly. “He’d be better off if I just left him on the doorstep to a fucking nunnery.”  
“Youth doesn’t automatically mean disqualified from parenthood, baby.” She gives you a smile that patronizes, but is kind. You feel more like a kid when you’re with her, despite being the same age, and that feels off, wrong. Something is

She’s the same age as you, and you know the fear in her eyes; she’s not ready to raise a child, either.

“But I am,” you insist, shaking your head, curling your fingers, and that’s harder than it used to be, and the fire doesn’t warm them now, the blood draining from your

Something is wrong.

“I am uniquely disqualified on account of being a horrible fucking person.” Your young face glares back at you in the window pane, bags beneath your eyes, shoulders still rounded on the edges, face still curved with baby fat. When you speak it is all your sleepless nights, all the fear and stress that eats away at you, like.

Like a dog?

Like a

Something is wrong.

“Rox,” you say, like you’re repeating someone else’s lines in a play, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” she murmurs, but there is something less like fear and more like cold steel under her tongue, and you knit your brows when she  
when she

She doesn’t say anything.

And suddenly you remember, or don’t remember well enough, and

Something is wrong.

“That’s wrong,” you say slowly, dread flooding through you like ice in the veins. Something is wrong.

Roxy doesn’t seem to notice, tilts her head so that her curls fall to the side with the movement. And you see her usually soft eyes, so sharp, slanted and violet with interest. She blinks and they’re round again, big and pink and concerned. “What do you mean?”

“That’s not how it went last time,” you say, and cold air hits hard on your arms because you’re not wearing a sweater, you’re wearing a polo, and your too-long arms are exposed and you remember.

Something is wrong.

You blink and you’re taller than her, tower over her, always the tallest person in the room, no longer young and afraid, no longer thin in the wrists, no longer skin and bone all the way down, thick in the knuckles and cruel in the head. You snatch her hand away from you, hold it tight so she can’t escape.

“And you’re not Roxy. Who are you.”

Her mouth twists and when you blink again, her hair is short, smooth and straight and perfectly pressed into a bob that frames her face, and the flicker of violet you saw before spreads from one eye to the other like slow-motion, like paint on water. She looks you up and down, tilts her head again. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“Smarter than you, I think,” you scoff, dropping her icicle hand and stepping back, because you need to get away, you have to get away from her.

When she smiles, you feel patronized, and the headache you had intensifies. _Danger_ , your mind says. Danger. She follows after you as you retreat, closes the door to your apartment behind her.

“I’d say that’s debatable,” she says, and you trip over the futon to put distance between you. “I definitely lived to be twenty years your senior, at least.”  
You don’t have to say a word and your sword is in your hand, instead of your

But you don’t remember,

You can’t remember.

Where else would it be?

You keep your back to the AC unit, hold the katana before you in warning. “I’ll ask again.” You will not be intimidated by some dame you’ve never met. “Who are you.”

Her smile is thin and unpleasant, with your sword pointed at her nose, like you’re a child and she’s amused. Your skin crawls as she blinks again, her eyes go ghostly white. “Rose. My name is Rose. I’m dead, and so are you.”

And you remember.

You remember green fire, and barking dogs, jet black fur and one arm, you remember radioactive energy, you remember feathers and

You remember the air as it left your lungs, and your shirt feels damp, and warm, and your fingers go stiff and ice cold.

You look down and there is a sword in your chest.

You blink and it’s gone.

You blink and it’s back.

“Huh,” is all you can say, and it doesn’t hurt when you reach down and draw it from your sternum, flesh tearing as it comes free.

  
“Damn,” you grunt, take another swig of lukewarm beer. “We couldn’t even handle one fucking apocalypse, huh. That blows.”

“Considerably,” Rose agrees, and you watch her delicately raise a martini glass to her lips, and think she looks out of place sitting on the edge of your apartment building in a long black dress more fit for the red carpet than beers with a stranger. “I suppose I am partially to blame, however.” She runs a finger over the edge of her glass. She looks sad. “What with not being able to stop )-(er, and all.”

“Nah,” you say, and don’t know why. It’s not like you know her, not really, and the only experience you have comforting anyone is a six-year old with nightmares (and you stopped, after that, and you don’t know why, but you do because he’s too big now, but he’s still a kid, and you’re a piece of shit). You guess her life was it’s own kind of nightmare, though. “Sounds like you did your best, given the shitty circumstances. S’not like there’s ways to prepare for a billion-year old sea witch trying to take over your planet.” You tip your shoulder in a shrug. “Still sucks humanity went the way of the dodo, though. Kinda thought we had more gumption than that.”

You are used to people staring at you, but it is still strange, with those bright white eyes, and fuck she’s dead, and fuck, you are too. Her expression makes you uncomfortable, even if it’s a bit funny. “What?”

She gives you a mocking shrug, smiles behind her glass. “It surprises me to hear such antiquated terms like ‘gumption’ from such a young man, that’s all.”

“Please, Miz Lalonde,” you drawl, dragging it out your Texan yeehaw cowboy best. “I’m from Texas. All I know is antiquity and false sincerity.”

“It doesn’t suit you,” is all she says, and drains the rest of her martini in one go.

 

You don’t know what you’re supposed to do with the knowledge that you’re dead.

You don’t get a handbook, Beetlejuice style, and there’s no waiting room or great beyond, at least not one you can see in your immediate future.

Mostly you spend your time sewing puppets you’re aware you shipped off months ago, or years ago, or were about to, before April. Sometimes you’re at the shop down the road, changing someone’s oil even though you haven’t worn the uniform in years, and you’ve long since grown into your too-big shirt, or you’re disassembling engines in the back because you aren’t good with customers and last time someone threw a wrench at your head. You mix music that’s never new, because it almost makes you happy, and the rhythm and movement of your fingers is like second nature, a long pause between one conscious thought and other, the closest you get to any kind of zen.

When you are bored, when you cannot work anymore, when your brain says “sleep”, you lie on the futon and you watch reruns of the same 80’s sitcoms while eating Cheetos that expired last July.

You never do find sleep, but sometimes

Sometimes, something in you goes wrong, and you aren’t proud of it, how often it happens, when you’re consumed by your own thoughts, when you can’t tell what time it is, when you can feel the hole in your chest like it’s corroding you from the inside out.

Sometimes, you find yourself reliving the moments leading up to your death. It’s like a computer glitch, the way your body moves on its own, how you can almost see it from the outside, the shutter of an old camera, snapshots that belong to someone else, except for the pain.

Green fire licking your heels.

Jet black fur, the flap of wings.

The air, leaving your lungs as your back hits the dirt, the way your blood oozes from your body, how your fingers go so cold and stiff and numb, how it’s not sudden enough for you, how you never felt like you deserved a hero’s death.

You do not sleep, not really, but you jerk upright like waking from so many dreams, with a hole in your heart and something missing in the back of your skull.

Something is always missing.

You just can’t remember what.

You stare at the ceiling of the apartment you’ve lived in for seventeen years and you wait.

And you don’t know what you’re waiting for, not really, until Rose shows up again, and again, then again.

It’s always when you’re thinking about Roxy, always some moment right before things turned into a fight, when you were cruel or mean, or she was drunk. You don’t know what to think about that.

The second time you split an old bottle of whiskey and she tells you about her brother, and you do not smile, or cannot smile, and you tell her about Roxy, your Roxy.

The third time you show her how to play Mad Snacks Yo, and she doesn’t look impressed, nor entirely surprised, when the game breaks itself. She doesn’t get the way it amuses you, how you can push the character forward, how even broken and twisted, you can manipulate his movements until you cross the finish line. By the end of her visit, you don’t particularly get it, either.

Something is wrong.

The fourth time neither of you really talk, and she shows you how to knit in silence while you try to hold it together long enough to learn to purl (you are not proud about how often your death replays itself, in alarmingly increasing intervals, and you don’t know how to stop it, don’t know if you really want to).

You successfully do  _not_ relive your death scene until after she leaves. And she never quite leaves through a door, or really seems to wander away at all. It feels more like the space between you shifts and changes, and then you’re alone again, and you’re not mad about it, and then you forget why you cared in the first place.

It takes you longer than you’d like, to ask about the fractured state of your existence, this little world that seems to only contain your apartment, but then not your apartment, but then not really anywhere, but everywhere, all at once.

“So what is this, exactly?” you finally ask, on her twelfth visit, and Rose looks up from where she’s perched in the study window, knees tucked up and feet dangling over the edge.

“Most people call it friendship,” she says carefully, closing her book, “but we don’t have to call it anything, if you like.

What the

Okay that’s so

You don’t know how to

“That’s not what I -” You pinch the bridge of your nose, take a deep breath. You’re trying not to be so angry, lately, finding it increasingly hard, like everything you feel all the time is too much, all the time. “That’s not what I meant.”

She waits for you to put your words together politely, hands folded in her lap. It just makes you feel worse, but you cannot say that, so you don’t.

“What is all this.” You gesture around the study, the walls and walls of books that flicker and change every time you blink. If you shift your head too quickly it becomes the Houston public library, then university library, then the study again. You blink and there’s fat armchairs separating you and Rose. You blink again and there’s rows of study tables between you. “This place. All these places. It feels real sometimes, tangible, acceptable as reality. But then other times it feels like...”

“A dream?” she suggests, tone cool but amused. She swings her legs over the ledge and drops her book on the hearth, beckoning you to join her in Lalonde’s kitchen. You follow, albeit warily, and accept the cup of water when it’s handed to you.

“Yeah. I never seem to remember where I started or how I got here. I just. Blink and it’s like everything changes, but it’s so continuous I forget, or maybe I don’t fuckin’ notice? It’s just like a -” You clamp your mouth shut when you reach the point of repetition.

“A dream,” Rose nods. “Which is fitting, considering they’re called dream bubbles.” She fetches a bottle of brandy and pours too much into a dusty glass. She doesn’t offer you one. “The gods of the furthest ring produce them as they drift through the abyss, and players who have died reside within them.”

You stare.

She stares back.

Okay. Not a joke.

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

She shrugs and sits down on the futon. “Stupid is a relative term that, given our location right now, makes the point moot. You died. You exist on through the bubbles. Simple as that.”

You fetch a beer from under the mattress and lean against the closest wizard statue. “So you played the game too, with Lalonde. Or her stunt double, or whatever.”

Rose shakes her head, and you think she looks sad. “I did not. There were...” Her lips pinch together in a way that is so completely Roxy. “Extenuating circumstances which prevented my direct intervention or assistance.”

You roll that around in your head briefly. You weren’t a player, not this round, your round, but you did die in the Game, if nothing else. “If you didn’t play, then how the hell’re you still hanging around?”

Her white eyes (still menacing as hell, and you haven’t gotten the courage to look at yourself in the mirror without your shades yet) seem to glow at that. “Extenuating circumstances.”

You hold steady, refuse to back down. “You gonna use that as an excuse for everything?”

“I might, if it bothers you,” she says with an intimidating kind of delight. Jesus, that’s kinda hot.

Aaaand you immediately put a stop to that notion. Nope. We’re not going there. Not today, Oedipus.

You tell your ghost dick brain to put a sock in it, lean back to stare at the popcorn ceiling of the apartment. “I don’t really know if anything actually bothers me anymore.”

“That’s a common side affect of being dead,” she says, and you think it sounds like pity.

“Is it?”

“In my experience, yes.” Her head tilts to the left as she leans back on your bed, legs crossed prim as a fucking princess at the ankle.

Something is wrong.

“Though you should know all about that, I presume. What with the cool guy stoicism and general lack of empathy.”

That causes you pause, and you chew on the words for a moment, something you taught Dave never to do. Never hesitate. Don’t give the enemy an opening. You settle for a snort. “You don’t know me.”

Something is wrong.

“Don’t I though?” she purrs as she stands, halfway across the room in a blink. Her voice is low and smoky and her lips curl into a dangerous smile, half-lidded eyes that pierce you in a way that makes you feel hollow. She approaches you with a sashay to her steps, a predator in heels, reaches out like she’s about to touch you.

To say you skitter is rude and presumptuous, but there is definitely nothing dignified about the way you leap over the counter, putting distance between the two of you that is logical and probably a touch ridiculous.

She’s unperturbed by the development, comes around the side so that you’re essentially trapped unless you hop back out of the kitchenette the way you came.

“I know your name is Dirk Strider. I know you were found in Houston, Texas. That you’ve never had parents. That you’re hyper aggressive and a bit soft under a mean streak a mile wide.” She pushes into your space, surrounds you with an aura that’s downright menacing, makes your brain itch and your skin crawl.

“Stop,” you say. It sounds like a weak protest. She doesn’t stop.

“I know you had a younger brother, that you raised him alone until you died in a game you couldn’t control. And oh, Dirk, wasn’t that so hard for you?”

Your palms press into the sink, slip a little as they start to sweat. She leans closer, hands laced behind her back. There’s a smug, disconcerting confidence oozing off of her, and you cannot breathe.

“I know you’re terrified of losing control.” Her voice is low, alluring and unsettling at the same time, and the hairs on the back of your neck raise as she stands tiptoe to toe with you.

“Shut up,” you snarl. You sound so childish. Pathetic. Stupid. You cannot breathe, sword punctured lungs and frigid cold fingers.

You cannot do this right now.

“He was scared of you, you know,” Rose whispers against your lips, and the press of her talon-like nails on your chest is a familiar, sickening reminder of your death, of something you’ve forgotten, something you almost remember. “And rightfully so.”

There’s a pull at your gut, and if you blink her skin looks grey, then purple, then pale as the moon. “There is a monster inside you, Dirk Strider, and you need to let it go.”  
Your vision is swallowed up black, and you stop being for a little while.

  
You come to on the couch in Roxy’s living room, and breathe the scent of clean laundry on your skin. Next week is Dave’s birthday, you remember, because you told him your birthday was this weekend, and that you were going out of town. That he’d be in the capable hands of the babysitter until you got back, and you’d know if he fucking misbehaved.

You hope she doesn’t ask about the cut on his cheek.

It was an accident, you tell yourself, pressing your face into the cushion. You would never hurt Dave on purpose.

But you did, you remember.

He’s old enough now, he needs to learn, he has to learn, he needs to be _betterfasterstrongerbolderinvincible_ and you cannot give him quarter.

He’s just a kid.

He’s a player, and he has to learn.

Christ, you really hurt him this time. You’ve hurt him so many times.

You close your eyes, squeeze them tight to fight off the headache. Ugh. You don’t remember drinking, but a migraine pulses behind your eyes like you’ve been hit by a freighter.

The sound of little feet pitter patter down the stairs, and when you open your eyes again, a child stands before you. Her hair is blonde like yours, cheeks ashen from lack of sunlight like Roxy.

She’s got your freckles.

Her eyes are wide and violet, and she looks surprised, albeit a little angry, to find you on her couch. “Who are you?”

“Who are YOU?” you return, rolling over and tucking your arms behind your head. Never let it be said that you are not the king of misdirection.

That seems to confuse her, and her cheeks puff out in a way that reminds you of Dave’s petulant indignity. “I asked you first.”

This is a game you can play. “I asked you second.”

Her mouth twists down like she ate a lemon whole and she crosses her arms. “Mother doesn’t let strangers into the house. If you’re robber, you should leave.”

You shrug. “So I ain’t a stranger.”

“You are to me.”

You squint, look over her, from the flowing pink nightgown to the messy blonde hair, eyes accusatory and too sharp. Yeah, you just fuckin’ bet. “Does it matter who I am? Scram, kid.”

Here is where her mouth opens, where Roxy hurries in cursing under her breath, making excuses and jostling her daughter until she leaves, looking back at you with a newfound curiosity.

Roxy doesn’t come.

Instead, her shoulders square and she puts her hands on her hips, eyes rolling up white in a blink. “Is that really the way you speak to children?”

“Maybe if you were actually a child to begin with,” you grunt. Pause, tip your head. “So you’re really her, huh? Roxy’s girl.”

A dirty look. “You already knew that.”

Another shrug. “Sorta. You look like her.”

She nods. “And you.”

You shake your head, ignore the way your stomach turns over as you sit up. “Nah. No one really looks like me.”

“Dave does. Or, he will, anyway.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” you snort, don’t smile. “Little shit.”

She comes to sit beside you and her entire body stretches in a millisecond, all long limbs and purple-tinted skin.

“What’s with the makeover a la Beauregarde,” you say, like a proper gentleman. “You fall into vat of grape popsicles or what?”

“That would be blueberries, Mr. Strider,” she says with a scathing look. She reaches over you to fetch her eternal martini from the coffee table. “A carryover from my previous existence, I think. When one falls into favor with the old gods, it’s rare to fall back out.”

“So is that what that. That thing was all about?” You do not admit to passing out, and she doesn’t bring it up.

“No,” she says simply. “I was merely proving a point.”

You scoff, lean back, casual, like you’re not trying to actively get the fuck away from her. “What point? That you can kill me? Good job, point proven.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” she snorts, crossing her legs at the ankle. “I am not entirely sure I could, were I so inclined. Which I am not,” she adds, like you were worried.

(You were, a little. You’re not telling her that.)

“Felt a whole lot like death to me,” you say instead.

“I don’t think it’s possible to kill a dead person,” she says. Pauses, then adds with a wince, “At least not completely. It’s only a theory.”

“You sure there’s not some Lord of the bubbles out there, waiting to consume us all?” you drawl. Her mouth twists sour. “What?”

Rose turns away, expression closed and unfamiliar. When she speaks, her voice is low, and there is an edge of fear that makes you decidedly uncomfortable. “Let us just hope he doesn’t get that far before they stop him.”

“Oh,” is all you can say, and you look off awkwardly, eyes searching for literally anything else to focus on.

A moment later, your flat screen flickers to life, and you watch the Muppet Christmas Carol in perfect silence.


	2. amrita

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is missing, and something is found.  
> Bro makes a final choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much just a bunch of fucky gore and kind of post-death mutilation no one asked for but me! Sorry in advance, hopefully I'll have remembered to tag it all properly!  
> Happy new year!

There is something missing, you think, when you not-wake one day on the futon, covered in a thin layer of sweat. Your heart pounds in your ears, the creaking of gears and the bubble of lava outside like a primal beat in your head, and you know, you _know_ , that something is wrong.

You cough wetly, smear blood across the back of your hand. Rub at the center of your chest with a kind of thoughtless persistence, until the bone beneath your skin caves just enough that you remember where you are, remember what happened.

You cannot keep track of days here, how they bleed into one another, memories layered over each other like old film reels. You shift from ten to twenty to thirty and back again, break your arm at twelve and puke up vodka for the first time at sixteen. You graduate and go to school and drop out in the same year or day or moment, and you lie on your futon, the one and only constant in your shitty memory-life, and you don’t age, or you do, or you did. There’s not much of a point in it, you think, but what do you know? You were never a time guy, you never pretended to understand how the universe worked. Time passes here, or it doesn’t.

Simple as that.

So you wait, or you don’t wait, or you are waiting for something.

And like the memories that needle at the back of your mind, you know, deep in your gut, that something is wrong, or missing, or about to happen.

So you pick at it.

_There is a monster inside you, Dirk Strider._

It’s not that you particularly enjoy the sensation of dying again. Or at least, you’re not sure you do. The events leading up to it are still some of the worst you’ve ever experienced, the sharp nip of flames, the smell of burning gasoline, the horror of that chess piece morphing in front of you, how he crackled green all the way down, the cool dread of knowing this is how you would end. It makes your insides rattle in a way they never did during your time spent alive.

If you weren’t such an obstinate dickwad, you might recognize fear when you saw it on your own face.

So you pick at it.

And keep picking.

You aren’t proud of it.

There’s very little in your life (and death, now, you suppose) left that you are actually proud of. When you get to the heart of it (and why does that feel like a pun), there isn’t much left for you, at the end of it all. Your pride was little more than a burden for those you placed it upon, and knowing that now changes one hundred percent of absolutely nothing. Dave will always mark the top of that list, anyway, and you hardly think you’ll ever get the chance to tell him, or that you’d even deserve to say it, if you did.

But as much as you can acknowledge that it’s fucked up, as much as you know that you shouldn’t, you cannot stop.

It’s not an obsession, really, not a full blown compulsion.

It’s minor, like a bad habit.

A peccadillo, if you will.

You don’t spend every minute of every day doing it. There’s plenty of other shit for you to do, or not do, and shit, being dead is the first opportunity you’ve had to take it easy in at least thirteen years, if not more. Not that you’ve ever been good at taking it easy, in complete and utter fairness. You don’t even know how to justify that.

It’s more like.

Like something to do when you’re bored, or when you forget yourself, or when you realize you’re reliving the same shit over and over and it drives you so absolutely up the walls insane with frustration for your lack of control that you press into yourself like -

Well.

Maybe it’s gettin’ pretty bad.

It is a little satisfying, you guess, when your back hits the dirt, when you cough hard and spray blood (still hot, then) across your shirt and down your forearm. There’s a gross little thrill, knowing that it won’t last forever, that it’s not the end for you, not this time, anyway.

It’s barely a pinch when you shift to look at no one, because there was no one there to watch you die, you’re sure of that, when the blade shifts and digs deeper and you can feel just a little bit more air escape.

It’s almost like release when it’s all over, when you grab your katana by the hilt with hands still halfway stuck in death, drag it out of your chest in a sweeping gesture. The sound is morbidly satisfying, though not entirely pleasant, the way your body cracks and tears, but when you take that deep breath again, when it bubbles blood from your lips and the hole in your sternum, you almost feel like you understand who you are again, and you climb to your feet and move on with your eternal existence with one less thing bothering you.

At least until the next time.

 

TG: egbeurt wants u to cme home dirk   
TG: she misses u a lot u kno!!!!!   
TT: I know.   
TT: But I’m busy, Roxy. Got a lot going on.   
TG: yeah yeah irons in teh fire bluh bluh we get it  
TT: Tell her,   
TT: I don’t know. Tell her I’ll be back next week.   
TG: dirk u been saying youll come back next week for the past four months  
TG: its almsot marxh u know we dont got a lot of time left  
TT: I know that. I just need more   
TG: Stop    
TG: saying time!! its not fair to me or to her and u knowo it   
TG: :(  
TT: Roxy.   
TG: ya  
TT: You’re drinking again. We talked about this.   
TG: yeah i knoe but it gets rly lonely now taht ur gone and its not my fautl  
TG: okey mebbe it is a lil bit  
TT: Rox, you know I can’t move back there. This is my.   
TT: My home, this is where I’m from. I like it here.   
TG: its a shithole dirk  
TT: Maybe, but it’s my shithole at least.   
TG: we rly dont need to rehash this over the phone lol  
TT: wait. what.  
TG: did u finish harleys weitd robot thingy  
TT: Ugh. Please don’t call it that. It was hell on fucking Earth, but yeah. Shipped it out from the post office today.  
TT: Told him to never ask anything from me ever fucking again.  
TG: never..... fuckign again u say?? ;)))))))  
TT: Roxy do me a favor and please shut the fuck up.  
TT: wait.  
TG: okayyyyy thsts p rudr strifer but fine i wont bring up ur crush on our mysterious old hottie benefactor ;)  
TG: L O L oh my god strifer  
TG: ***not even takin that back bc its on point  
TG: get it  
TT: uh. Uh, yeah. Yeah, Rox, I get it.  
TT: Listen, it’s not that I don’t want to come home, it’s just.  
TT: I have a lot of preparing to do, now.  
TG: what??? says who???? what about the paln dirk!!!  
TT: Says,  
TT: I can’t really explain. It’s just this feeling I have, I guess.  
TT: Like there’s a voice in the back of my head I can’t ignore.  
TT: Like all that shit we know, or Egbert knows, but won’t tell us.  
TT: Fuck, you’ve seen Hass’s house.  
TG: lol yeah ive seen what an absolute shit show its become since the kids ran away  
TG: hes still really messed up about that u know  
TT: Well maybe it’s for the best he moved off the mainland, anyway.  
TT: He wasn’t good for them.  
TT: Dirk you need to stop.  
TT: like i won’t be.  
TG: aww sweetie dont say thst ur gonna be a great sad  
TT: wait.  
TG: i totally meant to say dad i swear i wasnt callin u sad lol  
TG: tho tbh u can be a lil bit of a sadsack dstri  
TT: No. wait.  
TT: Something is wrong. this isn’t right.  
TG: Aww and we was doin so well too :(  
TT: we didn’t use pesterchum for this conversation.  
TT: it was on the phone.

And then you’re not standing in your kitchen anymore, puking from the stress of the past six months, clutching your phone in your hand, but you’re leaning with your palms pressed against the sink in Roxy’s bathroom, and you turn around to see Rose Lalonde frowning at you.

“You need to stop,” she says.

“I’m not doing anything,” you say, try not to curl in or turn your posture defensive.

She’s older, today, though no less beautiful. Her pale hair has gone stark white, lines that pull at the corners of her mouth more prominent, crow’s feet framing her eyes in a way that makes her more powerful, somehow. She is an intimidating figure in heels, you’ll give her that. “This game you are playing with yourself,” she says, and her voice is repressed anger, authoritative command you cannot (or do not want to) ignore. “Where you pick at yourself like a child with a scab, a wound you will not allow to heal.”

“Ain’t you the one who told me I’ve got a monster inside me, Ms. Lalonde?” you drawl, and you duck around her towards the kitchen, pull out Roxy’s favorite mug and Egbert’s, with it. Ain’t that just a slap in the face, on top of everything else. “Maybe I’m just trying to dig it out.”

“You cannot possibly understand what you are doing,” she snaps, and she is furious, you can see it in her eyes, sharp as anything, slanted down and piercing, like.

Well, like a sword in the chest, maybe.

Your fingers start to tingle, joints locking, and you press back against that, pop the knuckles on each hand one by one. “S’not like you left a set of instructions, Lalonde. Some emissary of the damned you seem to be.”

“I am nothing of the sort,” she snorts, takes the cup you push at her. She makes a face. Whiskey wasn’t Roxy’s favorite, either. “There is a quite literal hole in your soul, and all you are doing is making it bigger with your incessant.... scratching.” She says it scathingly, like she’s disgusted, like she’s seen you. And maybe she has, maybe you’re more obvious than you think.

You can’t quite keep your fingers from finding the indent under your shirt, and once you catch yourself, you wrap both hands around Egbert’s mug. “That’s some cliche ass nonsense if I ever heard it. Didn’t take you for the heart-n-soul type.”

“They are one in the same,” she sighs, like she can’t win with you. You guess you do make it kind of hard. “And I am not. Or never was, anyway. My forte was - still is, I suppose - fortune, and there is not much to predict or See in the land of the dead.”

Okay, that sounds totally fake and made up but. Well. So does your entire pathetic existence so who are you to judge? “But you can supposedly see the way I’m picking my ‘soul’ apart? Like, what? Peelin’ the skin off a grape?”

She gives you a look. “It’s more like you are shattering glass, but yes. Something of the sort. It isn’t my element, I’ve told you. But I have seen what can happen when one...” She trails off, sips her mug like it’s coffee. Hard gal, this Rose. “If you spent any time at all outside your pathetically excluded bubble, you might learn something more about the mechanics of the twelve aspects.”

“If I spent time outside my bubble,” you say slowly. What the fuck. You might not be as smart as you used to be, years of dumb shit and the joys of raising a child just scrubbing away at your brain cells like a steel wool sponge, but you’re pretty sure she just implied you can leave your own version of the afterlife. “You make it sound like I can just. Walk out the door.”

Rose looks at you like you’re an idiot. You almost kind of enjoy it. There’s a sort of  _“wow, he’s really asking me that right now”_ that you’ve only ever experienced from her side. You might have a little bit of a problem, on top of everything else. “There is no door, per se.”

“Per se,” you drawl out, mocking the pitch of her voice. It’s easier than Roxy’s, and you guess you really are related. Well, you’ll be damned. Or are damned, anyway. Haha.

“It’s not a door,” she insists, shakes her head. “Did you really think you and I were out here alone? How absolutely depressing would that be?” She snorts again and you think she might be playing at being drunk. Jesus, Roxy all over again. “Our existence here, and that of those who reside outside your tiny epicenter, they are fluid things, easy to manipulate if you know what you are doing. Though I suppose,” and here she tilts her head, narrows her eyes at you, “you do not. If you are careful, you can explore the bubbles through common points in memory. Or, if you are a player, through common points in ancestry, or another version of yourself’s memory.” She smiles at you over her mug. “Like how I found you. Given your semblance, it shouldn’t be hard for you. You know of the scratch, I presume?”

“Yes,” you say automatically. Of course you know. You know

Well. You don’t know everything.

But you know more than Harley ever did, more than Lalonde.

Because

Because he told you, didn’t he, he was

Something is wrong.

Something is missing.

“-ould try it sometime,” Rose is saying. “You might enjoy it. Get out of your own head for a moment.” She pauses, thinks about that. “Or rather, further into your own head. Or a version of it, anyway.”

“I don’t fucking think so,” you say, but you don’t know. You aren’t like her, you don’t understand this. This place you’re in, how it works. You didn’t know anything about this.

“Think about it,” she says, and her voice is almost soft, almost like an echo as your bubbles start to separate again. “And stop fucking killing yourself for fun. It’s disgusting.”

“You’re not my mom,” you say, and then you’re alone, and you don’t miss her, and then you’ve been alone for a few hours, and you can’t remember the last time she was there at all.

  
You do think about what she said, at least as much as you’ve ever actually thought about what anyone has said to you. You are not (or were not), historically, much of an active listener. But you know, now, that you are not actually alone, and that out there, there is a version of yourself whose dreams (or memories, or nightmares) you can access, if you try hard enough.

You are not a player, you tell yourself the first time you try it, nudging at the edge of your bubble. There’s no way for you to guarantee that it’s real, that you aren’t making it up, but it’s just a feeling you have. Pushing on an invisible wall at the corner of your apartment, hand against something that, for a moment, you almost imagine is pink, reflecting back at you.

It’s impossible, you think, for this to happen. For it to be real.

And then suddenly, there is no wall, and it’s like it always is whenever you remember you aren’t alone, and you’re sitting on the futon in the dark, hat missing, hair stuck to the side of your head and part of your face.

You feel tired, you remember being so tired, the sensation of eyelids that won’t stay open, the way your knuckles still ache from callouses that haven’t quite healed over yet. You are Dirk, you are Bro, and you are almost certainly twenty-something years old.

There’s a creak to your left and you do not flinch, squint in the dark for the loss of your shades.

And then you see him, and fuck, it has been a long damn time. He stands in the doorway to the hall, looking at you with wide eyes, shirt damp with sweat, shaking like a leaf and too petrified to move.

You don’t need strings to recite your lines. This is a moment in your life you remember all too well. “Dave?” you ask, and your voice is still grating in your chest, graveled with sleep, or lack of it.

He’s six, you remember, and he held a sword for the last time last week, and you remember that he won’t be big enough to train for at least two more years. Jesus, what an amount of time the both of you wasted (and you bite down on that, the callousness, that sickening drive, because it’s over, you don’t need to do that anymore).

You remember the cold glaze that rolled over your mind, here, but you haven’t seen Dave, or any Dave at all, since the start of your death, and you stay on-script. “This isn’t the bathroom.” It’s lighter, still, than it should be, cajoling. He is still learning to be afraid of you.

“I know that,” he says, and there’s a kind of stubborn accusation to it, with his cheeks puffed out and his hand curled into his shirt. Dave is not a baby, not anymore, but fuck if you can get him to sleep in his bed one full night. “I had a bad dream.”

Dave always has bad dreams, you remember. Used to kick the absolute shit out of you before you fled to the mercy of the futon. Kids need rooms, though. Whole apartment ended up being your room, besides.

“You can’t sleep here,” you say, and try to sound strict. You’re really fucking tired, you want to crash, cuddle up with

with

Uh

What?

Something is wrong.

Your chest starts to ache, and you feel the heat of Dave’s planet start to lick at the back of your neck, and you push back against it. You cannot do that here. Not right now.

“Go back to your room, Dave.” You don’t come across like an adult. You just sound like an annoyed fucking kid.

“No,” he says forcefully, honest to god stomps his foot. “I don’t like it. The bed smells like plastic, an’ the walls are too empty to sleep.”

Christ, this again. “Kid, I’ll buy you posters from the fucking Walmart tomorrow. Whatever you want. But you’re too fucking old now. You need to get used to your big kid bed.”

“I’m not a fucking baby, Bro,” he scoffs, and you hide your smile. The you of this time probably wouldn’t have smiled. Rolled his eyes, maybe. You don’t really remember.

“If you ain’t a baby you can sleep in your own damn bed.”

His shoulders drop when he realizes that you’re not going to let him win. “I dreamed you _died_ ,” he whispers, too small, too vulnerable.

And.

Okay.

Welp.

You don’t really remember if that’s what he actually said or not, but you feel like absolute shit about it, and you fight back the urge to scratch at your chest. “Fine,” you say, because you remember that much. You’ll just put him back in bed when he falls asleep, it won’t take much more than a minute, not when he’s with you. Idiot.

You lay back, roll towards the edge and lift up the covers. “But if you piss yourself, I ain’t cleaning it up.”

“Fuck you,” he says, but you don’t tell him not to talk like that, because you aren’t any better, and because he probably wouldn’t listen anyway. He looks smug, anyway, as he crawls under the blankets and steals the edge of your pillow.

Little shit.

You smooth back the hair from his face as he stares up at you, and you realize he looks sad, maybe a little scared. “Goodnight, Dave,” you say, and then you roll over the opposite way, back to him, don’t jerk when his fingers curl into the fabric of your shirt. You’ll wake up at 4 am curled around him, his hands tangled in the front of your chest, you remember, and you squeeze your eyes shut, think,  _I want OUT,_  and then you

You sit up with a jolt on the futon, soaked in sweat, heart pounding in your ears and the sound of rain pattering at the windows in 3-4 time.

“So?” she asks, sitting on the edge of the coffee table. “How did it go?”

“Was that actually Dave,” you murmur, and it feels... bad. You feel bad. You are wrapped in the web of your own cruelty and you do not remember how you got so fucking awful.

Something is missing.

Something is missing and you are so close to being able to reach out and touch it, you know it. You fucking  _know_  it.

“It was certainly  _a_ Dave,” Rose says, and the fact that she keeps her distance from you, you feel, is no coincidence. “It is hard to say if he was dead or dreaming, though I suspect a dream if he didn’t notice how off the whole situation must have been.”

Dead.

It’s like ice in the veins, the idea of your

of Dave

of your baby brother being

and fuck, you raised him, didn’t you, it was your job, you had one fucking job, you had to make him _fasterbetterstronger_

You trained him just fine, though, you’re sure of it, you had to have.

But if he

if he died

Fuck, the idea of Dave

Because that would mean you failed.

You failed and he died and  _you_  died and in the end what did you accomplish?

He was scared of you, you know.

Fuck his entire wing was just,

_Hee Hee_

Fuck fuck FUCK

A hand grabs your wrist as your fingers press into your sternum, and you do not think when you lash out, sword out in an instant. But it doesn’t matter because suddenly you’re disarmed and she’s bent over you, pressing you down. Her nails dig into your flesh like, like needles and you feel air escape your lungs and fuck, not in front of her, fuck.

_Haa Haa_

“Stop,” she says, and her voice is flat. Neutral. Void of emotion, and you sit there, with her holding your wrists, both of them now, and she stares at you while you battle yourself not to fall apart.

_Hoo Hoo_

You do not die again because she does not let you, and you choke on blood, struggle against her until you remember that it already happened, all over again.

“Dirk,” she says, and it’s something like pity, too soft, too kind, “you cannot keep doing this to yourself.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” you say, do not argue with her about your name, not this time.

“I’m not entirely sure that’s true,” Rose says, but when you tug again, she lets go. Watches you carefully as you roll away from her and then sink into the couch of the Lalonde manor, press the heels of your hands into your eyes.

“Why won’t you just leave me the fuck alone?” you rasp, and it feels pathetic, shameful. Frustration wells up in your chest but you don’t let it turn to toxic anger, not this time.

Where are your shades?

It probably doesn’t matter.

“Because if I did, you would tear yourself to pieces,” she sighs, and you cringe when you feel a hand brush the hair away from your face, ice cold, nails a little too sharp.

“Maybe I want to be in pieces,” you say instead of  _“please don’t fucking touch me.”_

“I don’t doubt it, but it’s really fucking pathetic to watch.”

You peek at her between your fingers, level her with a glare. “Why do you care at all? What do you have to gain, or lose, I guess, from me... doing whatever it is you think I’m doing.”

Rose’s face is usually set in stone, practiced poise, amused if not slightly annoyed by your impertinence. She looks sad now, you think, eyebrows knit, lips thin. “Roxy loved you. I will never... I may never meet her, not really. I feel something like obligation towards keeping you from.” She not-quite laughs. “Well, I can hardly call it dying. Your tendency towards splintering, and my... deal with the gods... it does not extend to our compatriots. You remind me of my brother. Call it sentimentality. I miss him. I don’t wish to lose the only other person here who truly understands any of this.”

“But I don’t,” you groan, wipe your hands down your face. Your eyes burn, and it feels like a piece of you has been scraped out through the sockets. “I don’t understand anything. I can barely hold a conversation without glitching out of existence and falling through the floor.”

“Your life is not a Bethesda game,” she snorts.

“Yes it is, it literally is, and I am an NPC.”

“Only in your own universe,” Rose says, and she’s holding a martini again, god, she really shouldn’t drink that much. “Just be glad you never had to see their downfall as a company.”

“Batterbitch?”

“Mm, no, hilariously. But I quite think you’d like Skyrim, anyway, for nothing else if not the flaws themselves.”

“Your brother like ‘em?” you murmur, to watch the way her face morphs over a series of complicated emotions.

“We did not have much time to play games,” she says carefully, and you know she’s hiding something from you. “But they brought him great ire. I suppose that would have pleased you.”

“Lady, not much in this fucked world has ever pleased me,” you say, and there’s an almost laugh that chokes itself on the way out.

“You really have to find him, Dirk,” she says, and it’s gentle, her hand on your shoulder, her violet eyes just millimeters from yours. “If you don’t, you will tear yourself apart looking.”

“I don’t know what that means,” you say, but she shakes her head, and you think about the hand curled into your shirt for hours, or minutes, or seconds, or years.

  
You are not afraid of yourself.  
You are not afraid of yourself, or you don’t want to be, or you won’t be, or you already are.

You stand in the middle of Dave’s room, except it’s not his room, it’s your room, and your hands are too small, with all the familiar nicks and scrapes, pads of your fingers too smooth, body too close to the floor. You could not count the freckles on your arms if you wanted to, and you do not have the scar that follows the length of your right forearm, but you are well past twelve, well past thirteen. You can hear the screech of gulls, smell the salt of the ocean, how it covers your apartment wall to wall, how your shoulders relax at that, how you know where you are, who you are.

But then, you don’t. Because you aren’t....

This isn’t your room.

This isn’t your apartment.

This is not you.

Something is wrong.

You are alone. You try to remember the last time you were alone and realize that you’ve never.

Well.

You’ve never been alone.

You always had Dave, or Roxy, or.

Before them you had.

When you were a baby, you had.

Your shades flash in front of your eyes and you full-body flinch, press your back to the nearest wall. You cannot breathe.

Something is wrong.

Pink text scrolls across your eyes.

TG: dirk u need to calm down  
TG: its not u i promise  
TG: its just a splinter  
TG: Well. Actually, I’m afraid you might be the splinter in this scenario.  
TT: i can’t breathe.  
TG: You need to relax.  
TG: You’re going to give yourself an anxiety attack again.  
TT: again.  
TG: Yes.  
TG: You remember last time?  
TT: no.  
TG: Well. I guess that’s okay lol  
TT: stop doing that.  
TG: Doing what?  
TT: using her handle.  
TG: Well I can hardly use mine. We’ve never actually met, and this version of you wouldn’t even begin to understand how to contact me, or my handle.  
TG: For what it’s worth, I am sorry about this.  
TT: i don’t want to be like this anymore.  
TG: Then you need to let go.  
TT: i don’t know how.  
TG: No, I don’t suppose you ever did.

And then there’s Rose before you, and it’s not your room, not really, you can see Dave’s shelves of dead shit there if you squint, and the pool balls on the sheets turn to card suits. You take a deep, shuddering breath.

It’s okay, you’re fine.

“You are  _not_ fine,” she says, and you think she’s laughing at you, almost.

“I know that,” you say, rub your eyes. It’s irritating, almost, that whenever you remember you’re dead, your shades disappear. What the fuck happened to them? “I’m trying to be.”

“You need to look again,” she presses. “Dirk, look at this room and tell me what you’re missing.”

You go very, very still.

Something is missing.

“How do you know -”

“We have gone in circles for far too long,” she says, and she’s wearing an all black dress that shimmers when she moves, liquid night, and you carefully do not watch as she sits down on the bed. “I cannot force you to remember, but you are going to crumble into  _nothing_ if you do not stop.”

“Okay,” you say, but it’s not okay, and you don’t want to, and your shirt is hot and sticky with blood, and this time when you press at the crack in your chest, she does not stop you. You inhale and it’s Dave’s room. You breathe out and it’s yours, except it’s not, and there are your smuppets, and your hats, and fuck, you do love hats, and there’s your katana, except it’s not your katana, because yours is stuck in the ground, or yours shattered on impact, or yours was taken by Roxy, except not your Roxy, and there is a small, white-mittened hand curled around it.

There is a little white mitten with long, floppy orange arms, and your chest surges with affection, because there he is,

  
_Hee Hee_

it's

"Cal," you say, and then you're you again, and you're standing in the apartment, at thirteen, then sixteen, then nineteen, twenty, holding Dave, thirty, thirty-three, and Cal is in pieces at your feet, and then he's whole again, and you are dead, and you are standing in your apartment with a sword in your chest. "It's Lil Cal."

_Haa Haa_

He's what's been missing, all along.  
  
The hole in your chest, the buzz in the back of your head, your inability to get ahold of any semblance of control.  
All this time, it was just Lil Cal.

_Hoo Hoo_

"What's the big deal?" you scoff, pick Cal up off the floor. It's just Cal, you were born with Cal, you were fuckin'  _raised_  with Cal. Ain't no man in the world like Lil Cal.

Your fingers go numb on contact, the back of your mind feels like the static of a TV, sharp, stinging, and you stutter, choke like you're suffocating. You drop him with a curse, grab your head, double over against the ringing in your ears. He hits the floor and the burn behind your eyes leaves, your chest aches, and you breathe again.

What. The. _Fuck_.

"So you see now," Rose says simply, and she picks up Cal for you, places him gingerly in the kitchen window, on the opposite side of the room, where neither of you can see his smiling face.

"What the fuck was that?" you ask, and your voice is strained to your ears, like sand paper in your throat.

"So you see now," she says again, more forceful this time. "Dirk. You have to let him go."

And you know she's right.

And you know she's been right all along.

And you know that Cal is the darkness in the corner of your mind you cannot explain.

And you know Cal is the piece of you that justifies your actions, Cal is the encouragement behind your cruelty, Cal is the piece of you that devours you from the inside out, that silences your fears and doubts and crushes you down until you are no longer a man but a

A puppet.

But that's not fair.

That's not fair.

You press into yourself, feel the scene shift beneath you but no matter what, he's there, he's always been there, he'll always be there, always. Always.

You curl in, drop to your knees, and you bow inward, feel the air leave you through a hole in your chest.

"It changes nothing, to be guilty in retrospect," Rose tells you, as the blood seeps through the back of your shirt. There is a coldness to her words, that frosty apathy that plagues you both.

"I don't care," you say.

"You cannot change the past by mutilating yourself, now," she says. "It isn't a rabbit to be pulled from a hat."

"How do I get rid of him," you mumble, and there's no emotions left for you, in the moment right before your death and continued revival. There is only peace, the satisfaction of a job being brought to completion, and the overwhelming drive to get. Rid. Of. Him.

"I don't know," she says, and she does not pull you to your feet, drops beside you in a crouch, touches the spot on your back where the blade sticks out. "He has carved out such a large piece of you, Strider. Embedded himself deep within your heart. My vision is of no use to you, here. I cannot tell you what to do."

"That's some messed up fucking horseshit," you say, and then you are standing, push her to the wall. Fury bubbles beneath the surface, out of your control, and you've never had any control, or perhaps that's all you had, at the end of everything.

Maybe your apathy killed you.

"You tell me over and over again, I have to let him go, but what does that mean? What the fuck am I supposed to do with that." You shove at her shoulder, and she does not waver, her expression does not change. "How am I supposed to do anything at fucking all when all I want is to -"

You want to die.

It hits you like a sledgehammer to the face, startles you silent.

You want to die.

How do you kill something that is already dead?

"He isn't real," is all Rose can say, of course it fucking is. She shakes her head. "Dirk, what you are doing? All of this?" She waves her hands around, and your apartment caves in a blink, becomes Roxy's bathroom, your bedroom, her bedroom, the living room of a home in Washington you barely remember. "It's only real as long as you let it be. But he isn't really here with us."

And she crosses to the hearth, to where a small jar you've never seen but hurts to acknowledge sits over a crackling fire, and she grabs it, and then it's Cal, and she walks him back to you. "This is a choice you have to make."

"Are you 'you skate or you die'ing me right now," you ask, staring at the face of your only childhood companion. Pain flickers deep within you, longing, regret, hurt. Love, you think.

"I will not pretend to know what that means," Rose says, her smile tender, playful. She's become something of a friend to you, despite her reticence, and she's not Roxy, never will be.

But to leave her.

Your chest (your heart) aches for something you cannot explain.

"But I will tell you, you have two options. You can let him go, or you can spend your eternity ripping yourself to tiny shreds until you are undone. This is a choice," she repeats, and she places Cal delicately in your outstretched hands, "you have to make."

"Okay," you say, and then you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm done with this! And sorry it's open-ended like that. I didn't think I could handle another 100k dive into healing and reconciliation vis a vis bro and rose haha  
> Anyway! Had a lot of fun! Was gonna be a or shot but. Here we are! Thanks guys!

**Author's Note:**

> i promise not to do weird things like this on the regular  
> merry christmas!


End file.
